Faking Your Death for a Mistress? I'm Taking Everything You Built!

The steel dial of the wall safe felt freezing against my fingertips. I punched in the six-digit code. Julian’s birthday.

The heavy door swung open with a faint groan.

I bypassed the stacks of bearer bonds and reached for the false bottom panel. My nails dug into the metal edge, prying it upward.

A navy blue passport rested inside the dark cavity. Next to it lay a printed boarding pass.

I flipped the passport open. The photo was Julian. The name printed beside his smiling face read *Marcus Thorne*.

I grabbed the boarding pass. A one-way flight to Belize. Scheduled for October 15th—the exact day after his car supposedly went over the cliff.

Any lingering trace of widow’s grief evaporated. Nausea twisted my stomach, instantly replaced by a cold, crawling disgust.

He hadn't died. He had run.

I stared at the glossy paper. A short, sharp laugh tore from my throat. It sounded far too loud in the empty study.

Julian staged his own death. And he left me behind to deal with his mistress, his bastards, and the corporate vultures.

An hour later, I shoved the passport and ticket across a glass desk.

"Explain this," I demanded.

Adrian Hale stared at the documents. The senior partner of Hale & Associates adjusted his wire-rimmed glasses, a bead of sweat forming at his temple.

"Eleanor, where did you find these?"

"In a place your paralegals missed," I replied, pulling out the leather guest chair and sitting down. "I want the offshore account flows. All of them. Right now."

Adrian tapped his gold pen against his blotter. He avoided my gaze, looking past my shoulder at the city skyline. "Financial records of that nature take time to subpoena. Especially international ones. It might just be a restructuring move."

"Does a dead man restructure from the grave, Adrian?" I asked.

He dropped the pen. It clattered loudly against the glass.

"Julian emptied the accounts," Adrian confessed, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper.

"Which ones?"

"The Harbor development. The biotech startup. And the pension fund for the warehouse workers." Adrian rubbed his jaw, his professional composure cracking. "He liquidated three major project funds a week before the crash. Nearly eighty million dollars."

My fingers curled into fists. Eighty million.

"He moved it to the Cayman account," I stated.

"We assume so," Adrian answered. "He used a shell corporation to mask the wire transfers. By the time the bank flagged the volume, the money was gone."

"And you didn't think to mention this when I was organizing his funeral?"

"I didn't know the extent of it until yesterday!" Adrian defended, finally looking up. "Julian kept his left hand hidden from his right. I only handled the domestic filings. He used a different firm for his overseas shell games."

I stood up. Pacing the length of the office, I processed the magnitude of the betrayal.

"Eighty million dollars gone, and a fake will in the hands of his mistress," I summarized, turning to face the lawyer. "He set me up to take the fall for the missing funds."

"There's something else."

The hesitation in Adrian's tone made me stop.

He opened a thick manila folder and slid a stack of papers toward the edge of the desk.

"I found this buried in the corporate insurance renewals," Adrian said. "Julian took out a new life insurance policy three days before the accident."

I walked back to the desk and pulled the top sheet toward me. "Fifty million dollars?"

"Yes."

"Who is the beneficiary?" I asked, scanning the endless paragraphs of legal jargon.

"He is." Adrian swallowed hard. "The policy isn't on his life, Eleanor. It's on yours."

The room went entirely silent.

I read the clause again. In the event of my accidental death, Marcus Thorne—the alias on the fake passport—would receive fifty million dollars, tax-free.

He didn't just plan to abandon me. He planned to profit from my murder.

"Cancel it," I ordered, tossing the paper back onto the desk.

"I already filed the paperwork," Adrian assured me. "But Eleanor, if Julian is alive, he might not know the policy is void. You could be in danger."

"Good." I grabbed my purse. "Let him think I'm still a walking paycheck. It means he'll have to come out of hiding eventually."

"What are you going to do?"

"I am executing a secret audit of every single asset attached to the Thorne name," I told him. "I will track every cent he stole. I will find exactly where he went, and I will freeze him out."

"The board will notice the inquiries," Adrian warned. "Uncle Arthur is already suspicious."

"Let them notice. I want them panicked. Panic makes people sloppy." I leveled a glare at him. "Julian wants to play dead? I'll make sure he stays that way. Without a dime to his name."

Adrian leaned back in his chair. He studied my face for a long moment, his expression unreadable.

Instead of offering more warnings, he reached into his suit jacket pocket.

He pulled out a tiny plastic case and placed it on the glass. Inside sat a micro SD card.

"What is that?" I asked.

"The police returned the wreckage of the car to the impound lot this morning," Adrian explained. "I sent a private investigator to take a look. He found a hidden dashcam integrated into the rearview mirror. It wasn't in the official police report."

I stared at the tiny black square.

"Is there video?"

"The lens was smashed," Adrian said. "But the audio recorder survived."

I picked up the plastic case. It felt heavy in my palm.

"Have you listened to it?" I asked.

Adrian shook his head. "I thought you should have the first pass. But Eleanor..."

"What?"

"My investigator pulled a preliminary transcript of the audio file," Adrian continued, his voice tight. "The last thirty seconds before the crash. Julian wasn't alone in the car."

My grip tightened on the plastic.

"Who was with him?"

"We don't know," Adrian replied. "But whoever it was, they were arguing about you."